Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Prosperity Paperback – Illustrated, September 13, 2012

The book is rich in examples that seek to point to the ways the system can be changed to grow the economy and unleash the potential of a country. The outline of the oath forward is there, but the call to action seems to be left more for the reader to ponder.

Liz and Kwasi did unchain Britannia, but they unchained Britannia from reasonable fiscal policy.

This book has well presented and thoughtful ideas.

It is important to know that this work was self-published by the “authors” as Ladybird books were unable to support publication.The book commences with the lead protagonist Kartang, set in a historical view of Albion, a green and pleasant land for centuries that has been recently blighted by youth riots reflecting the darker but more realist side to the “nation”.The “nation” has been over run by close neighbour Oceana, a stealthy attack taking several years we are informed, with assistance by subversive deep state conspiracy actors who remain largely mysterious throughout.With cameo walk on’s by legends Liz (Maggie) Truss, Priti (Nasty) Patel and comedy clown cat sidekick Don (Close the sea) Raab, the book quickly descends into selective research, improbable outcome and convenient “fact” as we are taken on a fantasy roller coaster ride of absurdity and fantasy.The book, initially written as junior accompaniment in the style of Harry Potter became notably famous when Charity Skydiver Nigel Farage re-worked it as a more crowd pleasing (somehow sic) low brow version. With greater emphasis on the more outlandish and essentially untrue actions of Oceania.Adapted for Television and Radio, the work has somehow achieved engagement with a wider audience and has recently become a fully fledged immersive audience participating play, with disastrous and highly predictable consequences.

The best things about this book are definitely the title and the illustration on the cover of Britannia shielding herself from the world. I wish Dominic Raab, Priti Patel, Kwasi Karteng, Chris Skidmore and Liz Truss had been more open about who wrote which chapter. (I guess Priti penned the one on Israel. But whose proofreading let all those typos through?) Anyway, since this 116 page, 6 chapter volume is talked up as the blueprint for post Brexit Britain, I thought I should read it. Apparently the UK needs: the banks of Canada, the geekish quality of tech people from India, the work ethic of Singaporeans, the optimism of Brazilians, and the Research and Development capabilities of Israel in order to get on. Coupled with these qualities from around the world, the authors argue for large-scale state deregulation and elimination of intrusive protections of workers and the environment, more tolerance for bankrupt companies, and less government support for the ill, the old, and the unemployed. They suggest it's good for parents to pay for extra maths and science tuition for their children, and they appear to condemn popular celebrity culture in Britain, too. There are 15 pages of notes on the chapters, along with a four page bibliography and an eight page index. This brings the total number of pages up to 144. With a cover price of 15.99, that means just over 11 pence per page. For what it's worth, I'd suggest buying it second hand, if at all.

This is a book prepared to advance the political ambitions of the writers from their ivory towers. It shows a no understanding of the complexities of society and the problems of those less fortunate than they are. They ignore the complexities of the social and business world thinking everyone who succeeds has worked hard and success is the result and all the failures are a result of laziness and lack of enterprise.Its purpose can only be to advance their political ambitions by the process of continually repeating the same untruths as evidenced by others with great ambitions..

115 and a bit page booklet. It supposedly took five people to write this hypocritical guff. One decent author could have knocked this off in a mornings work and put loads more meat into the content. This is a lazy superficial skim of UK and world wide politics, if it ever ranges that far, I have only just finished the first chapter and a bit. The photo above gives a size comparison with a normal sized 300 page book with the same font size. The book on the left is about real hard working men, idlers and lazy according to Kwarteng and Truss, et al. Those men actually got their hands dirty for little money and often died in the process. The authors of this little book have no comprehension of what hard work really is and would faint if handed a shovel and told to fill 5 cwt (1/4 ton) coal tubs all day, underground. Brazil and Canada are held up as shining examples of the way forward, but in a real world, have not exactly been shining endorsements of economics and the environment.

Like other reviewers, I thought I should have a go at this 'iconic' book, supposedly a manifesto of far-right evil which will turn the UK into a Singapore. Published in 2012 it's obviously very dated in places. The chapter on finance and debt contains a predictable narrative of blame for Labour overspending and of justification for austerity. Lots of ignorant rubbish about 'paying down the debt' (national debt is never 'paid down'). Brazil is lionised as having overtaken the UK as the sixth largest economy in the world. I see it has slipped down the league table and the UK is still at the No. 6 slot. The book is a kind of grab bag of economic and cultural examples from around the globe with very little depth of analysis and a great deal of cliché-ridden prose. About the only thing positive to say for it is that we could do with a more optimistic and less defeatist culture and no doubt we can and should learn from other countries. After 4 years of Brexit civil war followed by the 2020 Covid battering God knows we need it. Maybe 2021 will be the beginning of our longed-for renaissance as we leave the EU with some kind of deal, we all get vaccinated, and Boris or his successor can get the economy moving again. Does it matter that the authors are now in government? Well, at least Liz Truss has secured 57 trade deals worth nearly £200bn, Dominic Raab declined to follow Keir Starmer's BLM genuflection, and Priti Patel has increased compensation for those affected by the Windrush scandal. But let's hope the authors' political beliefs and policy prescriptions have matured in response to the convulsions of the last eight years and the conditional loan of Red Wall votes in 2019. A more up to date version of the overall theme is "The Wake-Up Call: Why the pandemic has exposed the weakness of the West - and how to fix it" by Adrian Wooldridge and John Micklethwait.